Motion connects the designers and developers who are working on a mobile application with its users. Scrolling, navigating through screens, and adding or editing content may all be inherent features of an app in 2017, but the app still needs to feel right. UX designers live for the challenge of making an app feel right to the user, and motion is one tool in their arsenal. As Shockoe tackles mastering this tool, here are three tips for how to start thinking about integrating motion into your designs.

Tip 1: Show the Relation

You’ve put in the work, made the sitemap, and even mapped out the flow. You know exactly how to get from Screen A to Screen Z. Do your users? It’s important to make sure your users will be able to navigate the app with the same fluidity you do. Probably the best option for ensuring this is one of the simplest: show your user where the screens are coming from.

Navigating from the leftmost tab to the one on the right? Show that by pushing your current content off-screen to the left, making room for the new content coming in from the right. Google Play Music is a fantastic example of how an entirely new page can originate from a single, much smaller element. It shows the growth of that element into a full page.

Tip 2: Don’t Lose the Users

This touches a bit on the last point, but it is key that you don’t confuse your users or lose them in a complicated motion. If you have too many elements moving in too many directions, or even one element moving too far, you may run into some problems.

An example of what to do and what not to do both come from different implementations of the same feature in different versions of the Android operating system. On devices that ran Android M, there was a hovering search bar at the top of the home screen. This was a great addition, bringing a Google search right to the forefront of the user’s most-frequented screen. As you might expect, the search automatically offered suggestions as the user typed.

On the newest Pixel 2, that search bar has been moved to the bottom of the home screen, just under the app drawer and just above the software buttons. A UX/hardware issue is solved here by allowing users to reach their search bar more easily, but a visual transition issue is created. When the user taps the new bottom-anchored search bar, it acts like before and is now on the top of the screen, populating your autofill search results. This is probably nit-picking and just requires some getting used to, but it makes the search bar feel like more of an “activation” and not a true, transforming element on the device’s screen. That takes away a bit of what made that simplicity in movement so special.

Tip 3: Have Some Fun. Find It, If You Have To

This point applies to everyone in design, but it holds special weight in designing motion as there is so much that can be done. This is more for your own sanity, but it’s very important in every project to have even a little fun, and not nearly enough people value taking a moment to do so. A solid check for this is looking inward and thinking about what you would want to see an app do.

Take 15 minutes, grab your notebook and a pencil, create some sketches, and just … go with it. Look at what’s been done in other apps, what hasn’t, and find what works for you. Don’t limit yourself to the mobile realm for inspiration; consider television shows, video games, etc., as well. The kind of work we’re most proud of is typically the work we enjoy making, so be sure to explore every corner of your creativity when designing motion.

So what are your thoughts?

Hopefully, these tips have helped you start thinking about the ways you can use motion in your designs. In this post, we touched on the basics of motion; we look forward to expanding on these ideas in a future post that dives deeper into the nitty-gritty details on how to make motion work in your apps. As you start integrating motion into your projects, reach out and let us know what you think, if you have any thoughts to add, or if these tips have helped you out in any way.